Hi Remi, hi friends,
> For the moment, my main objective is shogi. I
> will participate in the World Computer Shogi
> Championship in May.
Good luck! Please, keep us informed when
the tournament is running.
> So I am developing a game-independent AlphaZero framework.
I am hoping several people are working in this direction.
Explanation: In 1998 "Zillions of Games" (by Mark Lefler and
Jeff Mallet) was made public. It is a multi-game program. The
user only has to formulate the rules of a game in a script
language (zrf), and then the engine is playing this game, based
on alpha-beta with an evaluation function where each piece
gets its (local+global) mobility assigned. (Mark Lefler is
co-programmer of current top chess engine Komodo.)
In 2008, Cameron Browne published his Ph.D. thesis on "automated
game design", where a new game is evaluated by selfplay of an
alpha-beta engine.
It would be fantastic to have new programs which learn to play
newly designed games in AlphaZero mode. This would revolutionize
the design of new board games.
Side question: Is someone investigating AlphaZero approaches for
non-zero-sum games of for games with more than two players?
Ingo.